Some ideas on reducing high school dropout rate

I was intrigued by a recent article: “Opinion: To lower Quebec’s dropout rate, make school more challenging” by Noah Stevens on Aug. 2. In it, Stevens referenced two other “opinions” which he did not agree with: “Offering students remuneration (as businessman Mitch Garber proposed earlier this year) and eliminating standardized, provincewide final exams, as James Watt suggested in a recent Gazette op-ed.”

Stevens came to the conclusion that the solution to the province’s high dropout rates lay in sailing that proverbial ship in the direction of choppier (educational) waters that would force students to work harder in a sort of goaloriented fashion with an eye on the distant prize (called excellence.) The idea is to stoke what one assumes is a student’s latent pride in achievement.

Actually, the quest for excellence has already been fleshed out in a book that tickled those who were chasing an MBA: A bestseller called In Search of Excellence; in fact, a business book. Cold porridge for what ails one’s spirit, with more rhetoric in place of chicken soup for the soul.

My point is, the mission statement of all high schools should be: To help the student decide what he/she wants to do with their life. Educators like to think that the school curriculum is designed to offer a buffet of possible life paths.

That is not totally in line with Stevens’ suggestion that students need to be encouraged to make this world a better place. Where it would overlap is in offering them a balance of humanities and sciences. I don’t believe that secondary schools offer a sufficient balance of exportable options. We spit out too many scientists and too few humanists, too many number crunchers and too few humanitarians.

Schools need to practise what I did with my kids at the dinner table: “I don’t care what you decide to do with your life but do what is in your heart.” The old-fashioned approach was: “Be a doctor or an engineer or a dentist. Make money.” For every math and science course there should be a humanities-related non-elective. And there should be courses/workshops on how to figure out what you want to do, in plain English. A sort of UA clinic: Undecided Anonymous.

I agree that homework is forced labour that has passed its prime. I became a writer and a musician. I did both at home in thousands of hours. No one told me to practise. I was doing what I loved to do. Most high school kids don’t know what they want; that’s scary. But that dream exists in every one of them. High schools need to have administrators trained to draw out the inner desires in their students. If you like something, you will do it on your own. If they could have that in school, fewer people would drop out.

If you don’t like science you will always suck at it, and not become a scientist. We need to stop forcefeeding our kids in school.

One thing I certainly agree with from Stevens: “Students drop out because school fails to give them a higher purpose. Teaching people to be selfish is not inspiring. Teaching them to think of ways to build a better world is. If you want young people to become truly autonomous, teach them to think of others.”

The world needs more of that, and hopefully it comes with a child knowing what they want before they hit university or trade schools.

What we are talking about is a major overhaul of old school thinking. Good luck with that.